Vice President Joe Biden will meet with senior representatives of Latin American countries this week to 'emphasize that illegal immigration is not safe' and clear up 'misconceptions' about the U.S.'s policy on child immigration, a senior White House official said Sunday.

The senior official told reporters on a conference call that a visit to Guatemala had been added to Biden's schedule at the last minute so he could meet with representatives of the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to discuss the 'root causes' behind the apparent flood of unaccompanied minors leaving their countries to illegally immigrate to the U.S.

Biden's sudden visit to Guatemala is the Obama administration's latest effort to mitigate criticism that it encouraged thousands of children and teenagers to make the dangerous trek to the U.S. when it announced two years ago that it would stop deporting children of illegal immigrants.

Flood: Don Ray, the Executive Director of the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition compared the situation to the displacement of people following Hurricane Katrina

Sickness: Thousands of children have been transported to Nogales, Arizona, and have reportedly become sickened by the food they have been given at the shelter

Young faces: The pictures, taken recently, show just how many of the illegal immigrants are children -- many of whom have no supervising adult. Up to 400 a day are pouring over the border

The vice president, however, has attracted his own share of eye-rolls with recent comments about immigration.

On June 10 he told an audience at the National Association of Manufacturers that the U.S. economy needs a 'constant, unrelenting stream' of immigrants to continue coming across the border.

'Not dribbling,' he insisted. 'Significant flows.'

Obama's 2012 policy shift wasn't meant to apply to the children now crossing the border illegally.

But 33,000 unaccompanied minors have made the hazardous trip from Mexico to Texas since October,thinking they would be able to stay in the United States once they arrived.

'We are seeing hundreds turning themselves in daily. And I mean hundreds
at a time,' Chris Cabrera, a chapter leader of the
National Border Patrol Council, told CNN last week.

'They know that once they
get to the station, we are going to give them paperwork and we are
going to set them free into the United States,' he said.

The Christian Science Monitor says the Obama administration estimates that roughly 80,000 illegal immigrant children will seek safe haven in the U.S. this year.

Twelve times as many kids are coming north illegally this year as the year before president Obama instituted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Cheek-by-jowl: The immigrants are crammed in tiny rooms and forced to sleep on the floor with aluminium blankets as their only comfort

Conspiracy: An association of former border guards has accused the government of deliberately 'orchestrating' the flood of minors for 'political reasons'

'The
recent surge of children and teenagers from Central America showing up
at our southern border is an administration-made disaster,' Virginia GOP
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, recently told Fox
News.

'Word has gotten out around the world
about President Obama's lax immigration enforcement policies and it has
encouraged more individuals to come to the United States illegally,'
Goodlatte said in a statement.

A report last week found that many of the children being held in U.S. detention facilities had not bathed in days and were sleeping on plastic boards because holding facilities didn't have enough mattresses to go around.

Leaked
photos from one base that were obtained by Breitbart News show hundreds of children holed up in crowded concrete rooms, sleeping on the bare floor without blankets or pillows.

'Most of the time,
they're getting released to relatives in the U.S.' Cabrera told CNN. 'There's nowhere to put them, so they're released on their own
recognizance and have a pending court date.'

'I'd say between 95 and 97 per cent
of adults or youths don't show up for court.'

Vice President Joe Biden will meet with senior representatives of Latin America countries this week to 'emphasize that illegal immigration is not safe' and clear up 'misconceptions' about the U.S.'s policy on child immigration, a senior White House official said Sunday

President Barack Obama has called the influx of unaccompanied minors into the U.S. an urgent humanitarian
situation requiring a unified and coordinated federal response' and has announced an 'interagency Unified Coordination Group to ensure unity of effort across
the executive branch in responding to the humanitarian aspects of this
situation' to be headed up by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

Now, the president has commissioned Biden to travel overseas to have 'intensive consultations' with the governments of the children's home countries.

During his meetings Biden will talk with government officials from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras about how the U.S. wants to work together 'to try to make life better for these families and children in all of the countries of Central America,' a senior administration official said.

Biden is also expected to speak publicly about the issue, but the Obama administration official could offer no other details on when and where that might happen.

The administration official told reporters that Biden would stress in his remarks publicly and privately that, 'Putting your child in the hands of a criminal smuggling organization is not safe, and it is not worth subjecting children to a perilous journey when there is no light at the end of the tunnel.'